


when a star falls the whole sky mourns

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 08:47:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn is a shooting star and when he realized he was plummeting, he anchored himself to something meaningful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when a star falls the whole sky mourns

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know okay I just got inspired and drabbled.

It's like this, Harry thinks.

The world is a vast and endless sky, an expansive midnight blue. It’s magnificent and tainted and flawed and perfect. People are stars; culminations of weightless dust and swirling gas and beautiful nebulae. Shining, burning, bright and absolutely wonderful.

Zayn is different. Zayn is a shooting star.

He’s more than wonderful. He’s more than weightless dust and swirling gas and beautiful nebulae. He’s spectacular and once upon a time he was the brightest star in the expanse of blue sky. But now his light is dimming and he’s falling and the entirety of the sky is mourning their fallen one.

When Zayn knew he was falling, his gravity was failing and he was plummeting, he anchored himself to something meaningful, something true and inextricable. He tied his wrist to Harry’s with a rope made of silk and secrets and wordless goodbyes. So Zayn is falling and he’s tied, holding onto Harry as if they’re the connecting links in a chain. So they’re falling together and they’re taking everything with them.

-

The day Zayn’s hands become stained in crimson is the day Harry knows he’s going to lose him. It might have been inevitable from the start but Harry likes to pretend it wasn’t, likes to cling onto that last particle of hope that maybe, just maybe Zayn will get better. The hope floats away, mingling with the unsettled dust in the room when Zayn collapses into Harry’s arms.

He’s weak. As if there’s only a sliver of life left, only a handful of heartbeats keeping him here, bones turned to glass barely keeping him upright.

Harry bites back a sob when his hands linger a second too long on Zayn’s ribcage because Zayn was always thin.

Teah, Zayn was always thin, but now. Now Zayn is comprised of willow limbs; too long and too loose and too heavy. He’s razor sharp angles; hipbones and collarbones and shoulder blades too visible too prominent and cut like a diamond. His tanned skin hasn’t lost its colour, only faded into translucency like old paper, _blueblueblue_ veins painting his arms and chest.

They’re lying on the bed, Zayn’s breath coming in gulps and stutters of air as his body wracks with quiet sobs.  Harry just kisses his shoulders and his neck and rubs soothing circles into his hipbones until Zayn closes his eyes. They both know neither will sleep.

But they like to pretend.

-

It’s the weakest Harry has seen him but he insisted that Zayn come home. Home is where the heart is and Zayn has the biggest heart of them all. Home is where Zayn belongs and where he wanted to be and where he would always be. Home is where Zayn wanted to die.

The ride in the ambulance back to their flat in London is silent, the only words being spoken through linked fingers too afraid to let go. The paramedic is stubborn but Harry is moreso. Zayn is his and he will carry him into their flat if he wants to. Goddamn it he will. Fuck the stretcher because Harry is sick of everything to do with hospitals.   

The handful of heartbeats is diminishing and the sliver of life is thinner than a single silk cord.

Zayn’s eyelids are sunken in, stained in lavender and Harry kisses them, says _goodnight Zayn_ , adjusts the beanie on Zayn’s newly shaved head, and pretends to sleep. He does sleep eventually, for the first time in weeks and he dreams. A little white butterfly, fluttering through the darkness, its wings glowing. And for a second, Harry hopes.

He opens his eyes to black, the butterfly gone.

“Can I keep you?” he whispers into the nothingness, not expecting a reply. There’s a sigh and an intake of breath.

“Yes…” says Zayn’s weak voice.

Harry kisses him between the shoulder blades and closes his eyes again.

He likes to pretend.

-

Morning breaks through the darkened room, the sun warm on his eyelids and again Harry hopes. But everything is unmoving. Time seems to be at a standstill and there can be only one reason why.

His lips are blue, Harry notices.

Eyelids more sunken than ever and eyes unseeing. Skin too tight, too tight, _too tight_ over the smooth face and angles cut like a diamond. The flat planes of his chest motionless and the veins in his arms devoid of pumping blood.  

Harry wonders absently when Zayn was gone. He hopes it was when Harry was holding him and he knew he was loved and safe.

He hopes it was in his sleep, unknowing and guarded and peaceful.

He hopes it was when Harry was holding him. He hopes it was when Harry linked their pinkies and told him without words that if Zayn was falling, Harry was falling too and he wasn't in this alone. He never had been.

Because when a star falls, the whole sky mourns.

 

 


End file.
